1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a home appliance and a home appliance system, and more particularly to a home appliance and a home appliance system which can correctly output status information of the home appliance through a sound signal in order to transmit the status information of the home appliance to a service center through a communication network when a failure has occurred in the home appliance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, when a failure has occurred in a home appliance while the home appliance is in operation, the user makes a phone call to a service center or the like and explains details of the failure and asks about the cause of the failure.
Although European Patent Application No. EP0510519 describes a technology in which failure information of a home appliance is transmitted to a service center using a telephone network through a modem connected to the home appliance, this has a problem in that the modem should always be connected to the home appliance. Especially, connecting a telephone network to a home appliance such as a washing machine has spatial limitations since such a home appliance is generally installed in an outdoor place such as a porch of a house.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,987,105 describes a technology in which failure information of a home appliance is converted into a sound signal in an audio frequency band and the sound signal is transmitted to a service center or the like through a telephone. However, a home appliance described in this patent uses a single sound output device to output not only a variety of warning sounds, which are generated while the home appliance is in operation, but also the sound signal including failure information described above to the user. Especially, when there is a need to provide a sound signal including failure information having different output characteristics from those of warning sounds, it is difficult to satisfy such need. In addition, it is difficult to change the design of the home appliance to allow the home appliance to additionally output a sound signal including failure information using the same sound output device as that used in a general washing machine to output warning sounds. This reduces the extent of sharing of parts.